


with words unspoken (a silent devotion)

by paintedviolet



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Based on Series 12 Trailer, F/F, Fluff, Gay Disaster Thirteen, Gay Disaster Yasmin Khan, Gay Panic, Let Graham Eat 2020, One Shot, Pre-Relationship, based on fanart, bow tie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:20:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21540019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedviolet/pseuds/paintedviolet
Summary: "Movement tears her eyes away from her friends. The Doctor is suddenly in front of her, arms towards Yaz and the bow tie in her hands. With a head cocked to one side, her eyes wide and pleading, she asks, ‘Sorry, Yaz, but could you help me out? I always have a bit of a problem with these.’Repress, repress, don’t expose. Yaz breathes in – perhaps not the best idea, given the Doctor’s proximity. Peppermint and engine oil; it lingers. But Yaz hides the shakiness of her breath by raising an eyebrow at her best friend. She hopes no one can hear the slight tremble in her voice when she questions, ‘A bow tie, Doctor? Really?’"The Doctor needs a little help fixing her bow tie.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 17
Kudos: 100





	with words unspoken (a silent devotion)

**Author's Note:**

> who else is gay in here tonight lads
> 
> this is inspired by the wonderful [naomi's](https://not-mandip.tumblr.com) [fanart for the series 12 trailer](https://not-mandip.tumblr.com/post/189250020579/we-had-to-see-this-on-the-trailer), a scene which we _deserved_ to see - so support your fan creators and give her art some love!!
> 
> title taken from the delectable ['angels'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nW5AF0m9Zw) by the xx, which i'd recommend listening to while reading this chapter
> 
> also this isn't edited or beta'd so i apologise for any mistakes

Yaz watches the Doctor rush into the console room. Her jacket is flung over one shoulder, heavy black against the cool white of her crisp shirt. Her top button remains undone. Absent-mindedly, her fingers fidget, preoccupied with the bow tie in her hands: fingertips pressing against the curve of the bow; ready, almost. Her eyes are darting about the place, unaware of her mussed hair sticking to her face, unkempt.

She is the epitome of hurry, but Yaz feels none of it.

Instead, the frenzy that has overcome her is quiet, tempered. It concentrates on the image of the Doctor herself, doing nothing but recognising; cataloguing; reacting. Her breaths are just a little too quick to be called casual, but she is doing her best to keep them measured.

When the Doctor, picking them up from Sheffield, had announced that they were to dress up for their next adventure, Yaz’s brain had immediately run through all the possibilities of what the Doctor would wear. Dresses were possible – she hadn’t exactly said no – but they were unlikely given her preference to be mobile and flexible at all times. The natural conclusion of the Doctor wearing a suit came easily.

That, of course, was not to say that Yaz hadn’t immediately gone warm at the thought of it. That was not to say that the thought hadn’t kept her awake at night, unable to keep the images at bay. The dip of the Doctor’s head, turned slightly, and her hair falling _just so_: the blonde and pink offset by the black. The Doctor adjusting her collar; slinging her hands into trouser pockets. The way she would bunch her sleeves at her elbow when she got down to work.

The Doctor with the jacket off. Adjusting the buttons. The Doctor _undoing_—

All these thoughts were the bane of her. Unrelenting and unrepentant, they battered her common sense, her defences. It was something awful, laying there in her bed in the TARDIS – tortured by something so impossibly gorgeous that she was going mad at the thought of it. Restless, and reckless, tossing and turning. She barely slept.

And when she did, her imagination gave her no peace. There the Doctor stalked her dreams, handsome beyond compare, and sure of it, too.

She woke up burning, and barely able to smother it.

With the Doctor getting ready for the day – ‘Probably fallin’ about all over the place in her wardrobe,’ Ryan muses – the three of them are able to share in their mutual appreciation for each other’s outfits. Ryan and Graham have scrubbed up nicely in their suits, matching their bow ties – and it occurs to them, just how little they do this: how little they get to enjoy life doing more normal things, such as going to formal events. So much of their lives together are focused on trying to survive, and trying to enjoy the moments in between.

Even as they reflect on this, Yaz is filled with a nervousness, an uncharacteristic flight to her bones. Her eager limbs cannot settle. She unties and reties the cord of her jacket; lets her hands drift along the length of it, feels the silk of it. She crosses and uncrosses her arms. She tries to distract herself by contemplating her own outfit: the white of her polo underneath; the shimmer of her glittery jacket. But then her thoughts drift to the painstaking process of choosing her outfit. Much like the Doctor, she does not often dress for show. Her clothes are simple, practical. Glitter for glitter’s sake is an unusual concept for her. But she threw caution to the wind and chose it, mostly out of a curiosity to see how the Doctor would react. Whether she’d like it or not; and how wide her eyes would go, how big her smile would stretch.

She is doomed to these sorts of thoughts, enamoured as she is.

Her own reaction, then, surprises her. When the Doctor rushes down to the console, she does not feel the hurry. Instead, a quiet buzzing surrounds her, encapsulating her. The Doctor, all flurry: Yaz, frozen in it. All she can do is feel it mount, the crescendo never arriving.

Perhaps this is what dying feels like, Yaz thinks. The thought feels a little too far away. (And, oh God, is this who she is now? One tuxedo and she is thrown into a gay panic?)

The Doctor catches her stare, and _beams_.

‘You ready to go, Doc?’ Graham asks, an edge to his voice indicating that he already knows the answer.

‘Sorry, Graham, I’m not used to this just yet!’ The Doctor frowns. ‘Not in this body, anyway. New experiences take time!’

‘I get that, Doc, I do, but we’ve been waiting half an hour and I’m _starving_.’ His eyes take on a misty look. ‘I’d murder a pickle egg sandwich round about now.’

Yaz has forgotten how much time has already passed. Awareness comes to her in a rush –with a start, she realises Graham is now leaning against a pillar, fatigued already. Ryan has taken to circling around the console, careful not to touch any of the buttons tempting him, his eyes flicking back to Graham to send a sympathetic look.

Movement tears her eyes away from her friends. The Doctor is suddenly in front of her, arms towards Yaz and the bow tie in her hands. With a head cocked to one side, her eyes wide, pleading, she asks, ‘Sorry, Yaz, but could you help me out? I always have a bit of a problem with these.’

Repress, repress, don’t expose. Yaz breathes in – perhaps not the best idea, given the Doctor’s proximity. Peppermint and engine oil; it lingers. But Yaz hides the shakiness of her breath by raising an eyebrow at her best friend. She hopes no one can hear the slight tremble in her voice when she questions, ‘A bow tie, Doctor? Really?’

The Doctor pouts, and Yaz’s heart thumps wildly at the sight of it. ‘Bow ties are cool!’ she insists.

The invisible stamp of her foot against the unfairness of Yaz’s response is unfulfilled, but Yaz smiles at the thought anyway. Gently, she takes the bow tie from the Doctor’s offering hands, and watches as the Doctor slides into her tuxedo jacket, her delight deepening.

The sudden changes of colour. Black deep by nature; white made cream in the TARDIS’ lighting. Yaz’s eyes linger on the lines separating the two tones, taking it in when they adjust to the rise and fall of the Doctor’s chest.

She cannot stifle her sharp inhale in time.

The Doctor’s eyes flicker over to hers – Yaz’s heart stops. For a moment, she believes herself caught – ensnared in her own exposure, her own vulnerability – and frets over the reaction. To hide, to shelter, to cower; she prays the Doctor will do none of these, even if she might.

But the Doctor calms her frantic thoughts with a reassuring smile, and the worry fades. All that is left is the image of the Doctor there: all her shapes soft, her hair swishing from the slight dip of her head. Yaz falls back into the tempered frenzy; the never-crescendo cushioned by the comforting closeness of her best friend.

Yaz has had little practice with bow ties, but even submerged in her gay panic, she can recall the few memories she has of tying them. Her mum’s career requires many formal events – opening ceremonies, company Christmas parties, and the like – and her dad is obliged to accompany her. When her mum is speeding around the flat attempting to find her keys, her phone, her lipstick, it has been down to the daughters to ensure their father looks presentable. The movements, at this point, are muscle memory – and currently, she is incredibly thankful for it.

She doesn’t think she’d be able to cope without it. Not with the Doctor looking like that.

She steps even closer into the Doctor’s personal space, looping the material around the back of her neck. Yaz’s arms are close enough to rest on the Doctor’s body and stay there. Bracketed. Embraced. The images are almost as dizzying as the sight of the Doctor herself – closer than they often get.

The feeling of the Doctor near her never gets old. She is so immediate. So overpowering, just by being. Yaz swallows.

The Doctor makes no excuse to look away. Instead, she stays focused on Yaz, never looking down to see the process starting, the loops and the pull throughs.

In their openness, Yaz half-tricks herself, searching for everything she wants to see; all the things she can barely admit to herself. The intensity scorches her. She has to look down, concentrate on her hands moving over the top button, over the undulation of the bow tie. Her cheeks burn.

In the movement of bringing the material behind and under itself, her fingers graze the Doctor’s throat. The heat of it, the softness of her skin, startles her, and all of her insides jolt with it. Her eyes travel back up to the Doctor’s – by instinct, not choice – and in the moment they lock eyes, Yaz registers the faint blush spreading across the Doctor’s cheeks. Her heart jumps.

She is burning alive, and it is the most intimate thing she could imagine. All she can do is keep looking, watch the Doctor watching her.

Her hands feel ghostly, sentient and apart from her. Together, they bring the tie through and back on itself. The shape made; she pulls the two ends of the bow tighter, securing the material to its place.

Yaz has no reason to stay so close to the Doctor now the process is complete. Neither can she find a reason to step away – no reason she wants to confront, anyway. And so resumes the gay panic, she thinks. Unable to step away, unable to keep close.

In her panic, she puts on her widest smile, and pats the top of the Doctor’s chest with both her palms. ‘There you go, Doctor. All set,’ she chirps, astounded that her voice stays level throughout.

‘Thank you,’ the Doctor murmurs. Her voice, however, is a few notes lower than usual, and the tone delivers another blow to Yaz’s already vulnerable heart rate. ‘You’re very good with that. With your – with your...’

Yaz doesn’t know, exactly, what the Doctor’s Time Lord skills include; whether that encompasses better hearing, and better by what degree. Whatever it is, she hopes fervently that it does not mean the Doctor can currently hear her heart thumping wildly at the thought of the sentence the Doctor couldn’t complete. (At the thought of the euphemism, and the images _that _brings.) Tempered frenzy: she finds herself nodding a little too quickly, her hands still placed on the Doctor’s chest. She has to do something with her hands. She has to do something with her hands.

She brings her arms down to her sides, stiff and uncomfortable. ‘It’s good to practice,’ she blurts – and oh God, did she really say that? She closes her eyes briefly. Feigning calm, she moves forward. ‘Anyway. We’ve got a party to crash, haven’t we?’

‘Yeah, we do,’ Ryan pipes up. ‘Have for the past half hour.’

‘Oh! Right, yeah. Right.’ The Doctor clears her throat. She looks to the boys, the pink still dusted on her cheeks – but when she looks to Yaz, her smile is playful, with strokes of excitement and euphoria. ‘Let’s get a shift on, then!’ she continues, clapping her hands together and setting off for the door.

Ryan and Graham are the first to move, eager to start the adventure. Graham ambles in front, exiting the TARDIS’ open doors into the sunny day. Ryan slows his pace, just enough to turn his head to Yaz and raise his eyebrows. It is half-wonder, and half-exasperation – and all teasing. She glowers at him, but he brushes it off, smiling at the Doctor before he joins his granddad outside in the sun.

Yaz is the last to make a move. Her attempt to settle her heartbeat is pointless: as she moves to leave the TARDIS, the Doctor holds out her hand for Yaz to take.

And Yaz is helpless in it. Of course she takes it; her heart jolts again, delighting in the feel of the Doctor’s hand in hers. Soft skin and silent promises.

She looks up to the Doctor again and smiles, unbidden.

‘Ready?’ the Doctor asks, eyes shining.

Engine oil and peppermint. Yaz wants to stay in these moments forever.

‘As I’ll ever be,’ she answers, and together they move forward, into the glowing day.

**Author's Note:**

> thirteen in a tux got me (and yaz) feeling some type of way


End file.
